About 2,200 years B.C. Khammurabi reigned in Babylonia. In his code of laws were elaborate Excise laws governing the traffic in intoxicating liquors. It was therein sought to lessen the evils of drunkenness and, at the same time, continue the sale of liquor.

Since that time more than eighty generations have sought a way to solve the problem and, at the same time, continue the sale of liquor. The century that has recently passed into history solved the problem of slavery throughout the world by abolishing slavery. Undoubtedly this century will abolish the evils of the liquor traffic by abolishing the traffic.

The drunkenness of ancient times was from the use of unfortified wine and beer. Noah got drunk and disgraced himself on wine. Alexander the Great drank himself to death at 33 on wine and beer. The distillation of spirits was unknown until the eleventh century. All the drunken orgies of history, down to the Middle Ages, beastly carousals that have often changed the map of the world, arose from the traffic in wine and beer. Wine and beer never have been separated from the history of drunkenness, and never will be. Drunkenness will continue as long as the traffic in intoxicants continues.

Never has a law been enacted in America that had such a body of popular support behind it. It was the average man, in most cases the moderate drinker, who established prohibition in the US. In between the professional prohibitionist and the liquor dealer there came the moderate man, the occasional drinker, who was willing to forgo his glass of wine for the common good. He put the welfare of his town, his business, and his country above the small demands of his appetite.

Prohibition of the liquor traffic will not come in England until the great body of the people demand it. In this age of democracy, it can and will come in no other way. And the great soul of democracy is not to be found in the slums nor in the palaces of the rich. It is in the keeping of the middle classes, the small shopkeeper, the wage earner, and the men I see walking past my office in Fleet Street. There is no royal road to prohibition. It is wholly a matter of education. The prohibitionists must show that their policy has been effective where tried.

I believe that another decade will see the termination of the drink traffic in the British Islands. The case of the traffic is now on the docket for trial, and my confidence in the instinct of the British people for justice is such that I believe the verdict will be rendered within that time.